Adding Headings and Subheadings

A heading is a brief title that tells readers about the content of the section that follows. Subheadings indicate subsections within a major section; complex documents may have several levels of subheadings. Headings and subheadings help in three important ways: They show readers at a glance how the material is organized, they call attention to important points, and they highlight connections and transitions between ideas.

Descriptive headings, such as “Cost Considerations,” simply identify a topic without suggesting anything more. Informative headings, such as “Redesigning Material Flow to Cut Production Costs,” give the reader some context and may point toward any conclusions or recommendations that you offer in the section. Well-written informative headings are self-contained, which means readers can skim just the headings and subheadings and understand them without reading the rest of the document. Whatever types of headings you choose, keep them brief and grammatically parallel.

Use headings to grab the reader’s attention and organize material into short sections.

Informative headings are generally more helpful than descriptive ones.

Editing for Clarity and Conciseness

After you’ve reviewed and revised your message for readability, your next step is to make sure your message is as clear and as concise as possible.

Editing for Clarity

Make sure that every sentence conveys the meaning you intend and that readers can extract your intended meaning without needing to read the sentence more than once. To ensure clarity, look closely at your paragraph organization, sentence structure, and word choices. Can readers make sense of the related sentences in a paragraph? Is the meaning of each sentence easy to grasp? Is every word clear and unambiguous (meaning it doesn’t have any risk of being interpreted in more than one way)? See Table 5.1 on the next page for examples of the following tips:

■Break up overly long sentences. If you find yourself stuck in a long sentence, you’re probably trying to make the sentence do more than it can reasonably do, such as expressing two dissimilar thoughts or peppering the reader with too many pieces of supporting evidence at once. (Did you notice how difficult this long sentence was to read?)

■Rewrite hedging sentences. Hedging means pulling back from making an absolutely certain, definitive statement about a topic. Granted, sometimes you have to write may or seems to avoid stating a judgment as a fact. However, when you hedge too often or without good reason, you come across as being unsure of what you’re saying.

■Impose parallelism. Making your writing parallel means expressing two or more similar ideas using the same grammatical structure. Doing so helps your audience understand that the ideas are related, are of similar importance, and are on the same level of generality. Parallel patterns are also easier to read. You can impose parallelism by repeating a pattern in words, phrases, clauses, or entire sentences.

■Correct dangling modifiers. Sometimes a modifier is not just an adjective or an adverb but an entire phrase modifying a noun or a verb. Be careful not to leave this type of modifier dangling, with no connection to the subject of the sentence.

■Reword long noun sequences. When multiple nouns are strung together as modifiers, the resulting sentence can be hard to read. See if a single well-chosen word will do the job. If the nouns are all necessary, consider moving one or more to a modifying phrase, as shown in Table 5.1.

3 LEARNING OBJECTIVE

Describe the steps you can take to improve the clarity of your writing, and give four tips on making your writing more concise.

Clarity is essential to getting your message across accurately and efficiently.

Hedging is appropriate when you can’t be absolutely sure of a statement, but excessive hedging undermines your authority.

When you use parallel grammatical patterns to express two or more ideas, you show that they are comparable thoughts.

The magazine will be published January 1. I’d better meet the deadline because we want the article to appear before the trade show.

Mr. Johnson’s employment record shows that he is capable of handling the position.

Using dissimilar construction for similar ideas

Mr. Simms had been drenched with rain, bombarded with telephone calls, and his boss shouted at him.

To waste time and missing deadlines are bad habits.

Mr. Sims had been drenched with rain, bombarded with telephone calls, and shouted at by his boss.

Wasting time and missing deadlines are bad habits.

Dangling Modifiers

Creating confusion by placing modifiers close to the wrong nouns and verbs

Walking to the office, a red sports car passed her.

Reduced by 25 percent, Europe had its lowest semiconductor output in a decade.

A red sports car passed her while she was walking to the office.

Europe reduced semiconductor output by 25 percent, its lowest level in a decade.

The company that installs aluminum window sashes will give us an estimate on Friday.

The manager implemented the rules.

We verify shipment weekly

■Replace camouflaged verbs. Watch for words that end in -ion, -tion, -ing, -ment, -ant, -ent, -ence, -ance, and -ency. These endings often change verbs into nouns and adjectives, requiring you to add a verb to get your point across.

■Clarify sentence structure. Keep the subject and predicate of a sentence as close together as possible. Similarly, adjectives, adverbs, and prepositional phrases usually make the most sense when they’re placed as close as possible to the words they modify.

■Clarify awkward references. Try to avoid vague references such as the above-mentioned, as mentioned above, the aforementioned, the former, the latter, and respectively. Use a specific pointer such as “as described in the second paragraph on page 22.”

Subject and predicate should be placed as close together as possible, as should modifiers and the words they modify.

Editing for Conciseness

Many of the changes you make to improve clarity also shorten your message by removing unnecessary words. The next step is to examine the text with the specific goal of reducing the number of words you use. Readers appreciate conciseness and are more likely to read your documents if you have a reputation for efficient writing. See Table 5.2 on the next page for examples of the following tips:

■Delete unnecessary words and phrases. To test whether a word or phrase is essential, try the sentence without it. If the meaning doesn’t change, leave it out.

■Replace long words and phrases. Short words and phrases are generally more vivid and easier to read than long ones. Also, by using infinitives (the “to” form of a verb) in place of some phrases, you can often shorten sentences while making them clearer.

■Eliminate redundancies. In some word combinations, the words say the same thing. For instance, “visible to the eye” is redundant because visible is enough without further clarification; “to the eye” adds nothing.

■Recast “It is/There are” starters. If you start a sentence with an indefinite pronoun such as it or there, odds are the sentence could be shorter and more active. For instance, “We believe . . .” is a stronger opening than “It is believed that . . .”

As you make all these improvements, concentrate on how each word contributes to an effective sentence and on how each sentence helps to develop a coherent paragraph.

Make your documents tighter by removing unnecessary words, phrases, and sentences.

Using Technology to Revise Your Message

When it’s time to revise and polish your message, be sure to use the revision features in your software to full advantage. For instance, revision tracking (look for a feature called “track changes” or something similar) and commenting show proposed editing changes and provide a history of a document’s revisions. In Microsoft Word, for example, revisions appear in a different color, giving you a chance to review changes before accepting or rejecting them. Adobe Acrobat lets you attach comments to PDF files. Using revision marks and commenting features is also a great way to keep track of editing changes made by team members. Both Word and Acrobat let you use different colors for each reviewer, so you can keep everyone’s comments separate.

Four other software tools and functions can help you find the best words and use them correctly. First, a spell checker compares your document with an electronic dictionary, highlights unrecognized words, and suggests correct spellings. Spell checkers are wonderful for finding typos, but they are no substitute for careful reviewing. For example, if you use their when you mean to use there, your spell checker might not notice because their is spelled correctly (although a grammar checker might—see the next paragraph).

Second, a grammar checker tries to do for your grammar what a spell checker does for your spelling. Because the program doesn’t have a clue about what you’re trying to say, it can’t tell whether you’ve said it clearly or completely. However, grammar checkers can highlight items you should consider changing, such as passive voice, long sentences, and words that tend to be misused.

Third, a computer-based thesaurus (either within your software or on a website such as http://thesaurus.com or www.merriam-webster.com/) offers alternatives to a particular word. The best uses of a thesaurus are to find fresh, interesting words when you’ve been using the same word too many times and to find words that most accurately convey your

4 LEARNING OBJECTIVE

Identify four software tools that can help you revise messages,

and explain the risks of using them.

Spell checkers, grammar checkers, thesauruses, and style checkers can all help with the revision process, but they can’t take the place of good writing and editing skills.

Using overly long words

Using wordy phrases rather than infinitives

During the preceding year, the company accelerated operations.

The action was predicated on the assumption that the company was operating at a financial deficit.

If you want success as a writer, you must work hard.

Last year the company sped up operations.

The action was based on the belief that the company was losing money.

To succeed as a writer, you must work hard.

He went to the library for the purpose of studying.

The employer increased salaries so that she could improve morale.

He went to the library to study.

The employer increased salaries to improve morale.